I am Michael Rose, I am currently on secondment from the Environment Agency to

Defra.

Defra group is made up of the core department and 30 or so other organisations, if

you want to find out exactly who you can look this up on the internet.

My background I started out throwing buckets in rivers and wandering around landfill

sites in the south of Essex. I quickly realised that this was dangerous, and moved into

a team that worked to share data, by licensing it, to third parties.

I then was part of a team that implemented intellectual property management into

the Environment Agency, I have been involved in negotiation of complicated data

licences and was responsible for switching off a £5m a year business licensing data

into the conveyancing market as a result of the Open Data push.

All of these roles have involved being about understanding and working with others to

get them to change their behaviour and that is why I was asked to join Defra to help

with the Open Defra transformation journey.

I am not a data geek.

So, Defra has a Data Transformation Programme, why, well our previous Secretary of

State set us an 8000 new open data sets target between June 15 and June 16. At the

point she announced this Defra group had published 800 datasets.

The 8000 was the kick off act of Data Transformation, putting a target nearly

impossible to achieve and certainly impossible if we had continued to publish data in

the way that we had been doing.

What the 8000 did was put pressure onto the system(s) and break them, we had to

work across the group’s organisational silos to put in place a streamlined process for

publication. Which we did.

What kind of data - some FACTS like monitoring data- some educated FORECASTS

(aka modelling) - some INTERPRETATION (like survey)

SInce the end of the challenge, the thing that has been most interesting is how quickly

we have all reverted back to previous behaviours, we are still publishing data, and

we are probably publishing faster than before - but it is not longer done in a multi

organisation way. In effect now the ‘project’ has ended the thinking has ended.

The other question we often get asked is ‘so what’ 13k datasets, which of it is being

used. Well that brings me back to the initial point, it wasn't about 8000 per se, it was

about us examining and understanding the processes better.

Data sharing is nothing new, you all know this, we have been sharing data since

Government started. This is the National Food Survey from 1977.

So what is different now?

The world has changed, whilst Government has changed slowly, often still thinking

in ways that have grown over lots of years, the real world has accelerated away in the

field of data, there are people who can do things with data now that we couldn't

conceive.

This all means that people no longer are happy to be just told by us what the “truth”

is, they want to be able to interrogate the data we have used and then come to their

own conclusions - which should recognise the decisions we have made.

We are finding more and more that processed and interpreted ‘information’ we

publish is being asked to be supported by the data that underpins it. And we will need

to get comfortable sharing this if we want people to accept our view of the world.

So what about innovation, for that is the title of this presentation.

Here is an example.

For “interesting data” that we have published, like river levels and river flows which

are inextricably linked to river flooding, we have seen some innovations.

This online viewer of river information, is very like something that the environment

agency have created.

BUT it didnt cost the Environment Agency a penny AND it has this clever twitter

functionality where the gauge itself will tweet if a certain parameter is hit.

Would the EA have done that? Perhaps not.

Yet, we have released a lot of data, over the last year we have talked about lots of

examples where the data has been used, discussed through about

BUT is any of it truly life changing?

Is any of it truly innovative?

What is it we are trying to innovate?

Is it how people create apps and value from our data?

Do we really care about that? Really deep down?

Or, are we trying to deliver our organisations objectives in a very challenging

environment where resources are decreasing and complexity is increasing.

Maybe innovation with data is about how we get people to use our data to make

decisions for themselves that benefit them and a help deliver our outcomes?

For the past 5 years I have been working with Paul Wyse in the Environment Agency

on how we use data to persuade big businesses to help us deliver our objectives.

We started this work before Open Data, but Open Data has made it much easier - as

the discussions we have no longer need to talk in any way about contracts!!

So, lets discuss an example.

Tesco are a big business, right?

They have millions of customers, who care about the things we care about, right?

They will be interested therefore in flooding data, right?

We want them to be interested, because they can help us maximise the reach of our

data and information.

They can help us achieve our objectives about building resilience and obtaining

partnership funding

Potentially.

And of course, it is obvious why they should care.

Just look at these images for central Leeds. But how easy is it to engage with Tesco?

We used to find it really hard, unless this happened:

But if this hasn't happened how do we get them to care?

We have to put ourselves in their shoes.

What is obvious to us, will not be obvious to them

Think, a store manager is focussed on delivering the right products to the right

customers

They use data, lots of it, [clubcard] they also use things like weather data and

historical data to predict what they might need.

BUT flooding is not a regular event in every location, they may never have used the

data before. And as a sporadic and difficult to predict risk, what are the benefits -

surely it just adds more complexity to an already complex job?

A relevant Tangent.

Some of you will have stayed in a hotel last night.

It is likely, that at some point the company that owns that hotel will have done

something like this.

It is called a KANO (cant remember why) and is a continuous improvement technique.

It is a way of considering your customer - putting yourself in their shows.

If you book a hotel room, you expect a clean room and a bathroom as minimum

You want a nice big bed and somewhere to work

But you would be delighted and want to go back to that hotel if you got free wifi, a

gym, free beer etc.

We can apply this technique to our tesco store manager

When we go and see them to talk about flooding, because they will talk to us because

we are the government, we have our foot in the door.

What normally happens next is we tell them what to do, leave, and wonder why

nothing changes.

By using KANO we can think about what they want regarding a flood meeting.

They would expect that

I can explain why I am there

I would tell them about the flood warning services

I would explain how flood warnings would work for them

They may want that

I can tell them how new flood defences in the area might benefit them in terms of

savings

I can explain how they can help make flood defences happen faster

I could begin to help them with how to help themselves, like with flood plans etc

They may well be delighted when

I begin to show them that there is data available to help them plan

I discuss how by using the data they can understand possible impact on their

supply chain

I can explain how we can help make their supply chains more resilient

Now this isnt necessarily correct, as it is an art - but you can see that this is suddenly

much more relevant to them than “here is some data”.

What we are doing is using our data to help us break silos - the old internal and

external is becoming less relevant when we actually have shared objectives.

We can use our data to explain to others that they have a problem. AND that using

our data and working with us can help mitigate that problem.

We all use data, we just need to spend some time looking from their perspective, to

get them to see things as we do. Or at least to see the shared objective.

What you have probably spotted is that this is more resource intensive than the ‘build

it and they will come’ publishing of data.

This also needs to be continuous process and needs to be part of how we think.

GDS has told us to be user focused in our digital services

We need to take this further - we need to be user focussed in all our engagements

For example

Senior managers internally senior managers externally

Delivery people internally - delivery people externally

Construction in oxford - anecdotal story

Project manager / site manager focussed on delivering project

Local team failing to get engagement on sustainability and flood resilience

- WHY?

Senior director interested in sustainability targets from strategy

Alter point of engagement when understand the customer.

We therefore will need to prioritise our data engagements - and this is where our

strategy documents come in. Not all data is equal because some underpins our

strategy more than others. We use our organisations targets to focus our efforts.

It can work, we have had successes working with Marks and Spencer's for example

where they have llworked with us to help assess their own exposure to risks which we

identify in our data. They have used our data to help come up with this plan.

They have provided a vehicle for us getting our flood awareness messages out

through their store magazines, having in store (and HQ) events. Part of the reason for

this success was us approaching them after reading their Plan A strategy and being

clear in how using our data could help them meet some of their own ambitions.

Final couple of slides.

I just wanted to touch back on silos.

Silos are not necessarily bad, human nature builds them as we need to break things

up in order to be able to manage them.

Data is a way of bridging between these silos - which is a nicer metaphor and picture.